Lidia VALENTIN for women – Lasha TALAKHADZE for men are the Best of 2017!

Among the women Spanish LidiaVALENTIN, among the men Georgian LashaTALAKHADZE have been voted as Lifters of the Year for 2017. The final result of the traditional online voting launched by WORLD WEIGHTLIFTING was clear-cut: VALENTIN won with a huge advantage, and TALAKHADZE, who was second for 2016, received significantly more votes than the 4 other nominees each on the magazine’s list. All athletes recommended for the prestigious title are world champions.

Since 1991 female Lifters of the Year have been awarded and VALENTIN is the first Spanish to receive the honour. In her case, over 16,400 ballots appreciated the fact that – in addition to her 3 Olympic medals of different colours and her three European champion titles – she also obtained the world championship gold medal at Anaheim – easily – in the 75kg category. She is followed by Taiwan’s world record breaker and World Champion, KUO Hsing-Chun. America’s +90kg World Champion Sarah ROBLES finished in third place.

Among the men, where the best of the year have been elected since 1982, nobody from Georgia has ever won before. This time, however, TALAKHADZE was the favourite contender beyond any doubt. Georgian giant, Olympic Champion in Rio 2016, continued to set world records in 2017 and earned the 3 World Championship gold medals at Anaheim with further two new marks unprecedented in history. He received more than 9,800 votes. The runner-up – remarkably close to his heels – is Egyptian Ihab MAHMOUD with nearly 8,500 votes. Over 3,100 voters made their choice in favour of Iran’s Sohrab MORADI, a world record setter World Champion himself.

WORLD WEIGHTLIFTING wishes to thank all voters! After the consolidation of the ballots received, here is the result: